Israeli soldiers forced, on Monday morning, traders from occupied Jerusalem to close their shops.

Al Ray sources said that the occupation ordered the traders to close their shops in Salah al-Din, al-Sultan Suleiman, and al-Rashid streets, in the Old City district of Jerusalem.

The sources also explained that the soldiers spread out in Salah al-Din street and in the downtown area, ordering the traders to close their shops amid a state of tension .

The command was issued after an Israeli soldier shot Ayman al-kurd (20 years old), in Rass Al-Amood neighborhood, Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque, for reportedly stabbing two so-called “border guards” at Bab A-Sahera gate. The border guards were injured and sent to a local hospital.

Also on Monday, extremist Israeli settlers headed by the American-born rabbi Yehuda Glick resumed their regular raids on al-Aqsa Mosque, via the Moroccan gate, under heavy guard of Israeli police.

Jerusalemite sources reported that the settlers stormed the courtyards of the mosque in groups accompanied by rabbis.

The sources reported that known extremist rabbi Yehuda Glick tried to storm the courtyard of the holy mosque, but performed Talmudic rituals at Alqtanin gate.

Worshippers defended the Islamic holy site and banned the settlers from touring.Israeli settlers raid the courtyards of al-Aqsa Mosque on an almost daily basis, in order to set up a temporal and spatial division of the Islamic holy site.

The Israeli occupation authority intends to stage a marathon on Monday night around and in the Old City of Jerusalem as part of a plan to hold events ahead of the quadrennial Jewish Olympics (Maccabiah Games) to be held next year.

Such Israeli sports events in east Jerusalem are aimed at marketing the holy city as the eternal capital of the Jewish state, especially that the Palestinians will commemorate the 50th anniversary of its occupation next year.

According to Qpress news website, head of the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem Nir Barkat will participate in the marathon today.

The Israeli authorities transferred, on Sunday evening, the body of slain Jordanian man, Sa’id Hayel Amro, 28, to the Jordanian side of the Allenby Border Terminal.

The Petra Jordanian News Agency quoted the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Sabah Rafei stating that the body of Amro, who was killed two days ago in Jerusalem, was moved to Jordan, and that his family will receive it after the authorities conduct all needed measures.

Later on, the body was moved to the Al-Karak Governmental Hospital.

Rafei added that the Jordanian authorities are closely following the investigation, in order to obtain details on the events that led to his fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers in occupied Jerusalem, this past Friday September, 16.

The soldiers fatally shot Amro in Bab al-‘Amoud area, in Jerusalem, after he reportedly attempted to stab an officer.

It is worth mentioning that Amro was from the al-Mogheer village, near Al-Karak city, south of Jordan.

Ministry spokesperson, Sabah Al-Rafei, cast doubt on the Israeli police narrative that Amr had tried to stab Israeli troops, saying the police statement had clearly stated that no soldiers or policemen were hurt in the incident.

Rafei said the Jordanian government was following up on the incident, which took place Friday, to learn about the details and ensure that the body of the victim will be handed over to his family "so that legal and diplomatic measures applied internationally in such cases could be pursued".

Amr’s family members have also been striving to receive his body. The Jordanian citizen entered the occupied Palestinian territories on Thursday with a tourist group to visit the holy city of Jerusalem. The family added that their son has no political affiliations and that he was executed in an arbitrary manner.

Israeli forces shot and killed Raghad’s fiance 18-year-old Fares Moussa Muhammad Khaddour during the alleged attack, while Raghad was critically wounded. Three Israeli civilians were also wounded in the incident -- it remained unknown the severity of their injuries.

Raghad’s husband was one of five to have been killed by Israeli forces since Thursday evening. He was shot dead by Israeli forces some 45 minutes after a Jordanian citizen was shot and killed by Israeli forces after allegedly carrying out a stabbing attack outside Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Ahmad Abed al-Fattah al-Sarrahin, 30, was killed on Thursday after succumbing to gunshot wounds sustained earlier in the day when Israeli forces raided the village of Beit Ula in the district of Hebron and opened live fire on al-Sarrahin as soldiers reportedly struggled to detain him.

According to Ma'an documentation, at least 227 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis and some 32 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians since a wave of unrest first swept across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October.

Israel has come under repeated criticism for failing to carry out due process in response to alleged and actual attacks, particularly in regard to the apparent extrajudicial executions of Palestinians who no longer posed a threat when they were killed.

The family of Jordanian martyr Sa'eid Amr, who was shot dead by the Israeli police on Friday at al-Amud (Damascus) Gate in Occupied Jerusalem, started to make contacts with the authorities in Amman to bring the body of its son home swiftly.

27-year-old Amr, who was working for the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company, had no political affiliation and came to Palestine as a tourist, according to the family.

To justify his cold-blooded killing, the Israeli police claimed he tried to stab one of their men at al-Amud Gate.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) tightened their military restrictions on Bani Naim town east of al-Khalil and closed all entrances leading to it.

According to the PIC reporter, Israeli forces closed Saturday morning all roads and entrances leading to the town, restricting the people’s movement in both directions.

Several local homes were also stormed while two residents were summoned for investigation, the sources added.

The military restrictions came as part of Israel’s collective punishment against the town after one of its inhabitants carried out Friday afternoon an alleged car-ramming attack near Kiryat Arba settlement.

Bani Naim town had been subjected to several closures over the past few months.

he Palestinian MP and deputy head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Kais Abdul Karim, Abu Laila, called Friday for providing protection for the Palestinian people in light of the escalated Israeli crimes against civilians.

The Israeli executions that occurred Friday in al-Khalil and occupied Jerusalem came as part of the Israeli continued aggression and bloody war against "our unarmed people", he said.

The Hamas Movement has strongly condemned the extrajudicial killing of three Palestinian citizens in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Friday at the hands of Israeli soldiers, stressing that such crimes make the resistance more determined to retaliate.

"Such crimes will not succeed in breaking the will of our people, and all this pure blood will be a disaster for the occupation and a blessed fuel for al-Quds intifada (uprising)," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Abu Zuhri called on the Palestinian people to continue their resistance activities against the occupation in revenge for the blood of their martyrs.

For his part, Husam Badran, another spokesman for Hamas, stated that Israel's persistence in committing crimes against the Palestinian people would increase the resistance' determination to respond strongly.

He also urged all Palestinian resistance factions to join forces to avenge the Palestinian blood.

Mohammed Amassi, at home this week. When he raised his hands and called out to the soldier, 'Enough, enough,' the sniper fired one more round, perhaps just for an encore

Four rounds of sniper fire hit Mohammed Amassi, a young Palestinian baker standing on the roof of his home in the Al-Fawwar refugee camp. As he tries now to recover from his wounds, he still remembers the mocking words of the soldier who shot him.

Why waste words when the video from the Palestinian news agency Ma’an shows pretty much everything? Israeli soldiers are on the roof of the next-door apartment building:

One is on the lower roof, two on the balcony of the apartment above the roof, and two more are looking out from the apartment window. A few teenage girls and children are looking at them from the neighboring roof. Total silence. Suddenly, the two soldiers on the balcony raise their hands, as though giving a signal, and one of them, the sniper, aims and starts shooting. On the roof of the building, Mohammed Amassi is hit. He falls to the ground and starts crawling for his life, bent on getting off the roof. Finally, a medical team gets him down via a ladder. The only thing Amassi is holding is his cell phone. Nothing about him could have seemed threatening to the soldiers on the roof opposite, about 80 meters (260 feet) away. The sniper took aim and fired, hitting him with round after round. The palm of one hand is covered with blood; he is writhing in pain, stunned.

A few weeks later, Amassi, 22, is in his living room, lying on a new adjustable bed that has been loaned to him by a Palestinian charity. He’s a good-looking young man, smiling and quiet. His family’s home is well kept, compared to others in Al-Fawwar — a hardscrabble refugee camp, the most southerly in the West Bank and the one that most closely resembles the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, which isn’t all that far from here.

On August 16, a huge Israel Defense Forces raiding party, consisting of hundreds of soldiers, swooped into Al-Fawwar in the dead of night. In less than 24 hours, they killed one person and wounded dozens more. Their haul: two old pistols. (Amira Hass wrote about this unbelievable operation, “One killed and dozens wounded at a Palestinian refugee camp, all for two pistols,” in Haaretz, August 21.) The local residents are convinced the raid was nothing more than a training exercise carried out at their expense.

We arrived at Al-Fawwar on the eve of Id al-Adha (the feast of the sacrifice). In the butcher shop, a cow was being sliced up for the holiday. Those who can afford meat congregated around the animal, waiting for their portion. The IDF rarely carries out raids in this crowded camp, where about 10,000 people live in an area of one square kilometer. The troops haven’t returned since the raid.

Amassi is the son of the camp’s baker, Ibrahim Amassi, and the eldest of six siblings. Their family bakery was the first in Al-Fawwar, dating from the foundation of the refugee camp in the early 1950s. In recent years, it’s produced mainly pretzels, cookies and special doughs for traditional dishes. Mohammed studied interior design, but afterward became a baker to help provide for the family. He works two shifts a day, morning and afternoon, seven days a week. He has never been arrested or even been interrogated by Israeli authorities. Above the living room in which he is now recovering, another apartment is being built: he will live there when he marries and has a family of his own.

His hand is bandaged, and both legs are marked with wounds and scars from the shooting and subsequent surgery. Bedridden, Amassi continues to suffer from intense pain. It’s not clear whether he will be able either to walk again or to use his hand. At the moment, he can only hobble around with the aid of crutches. On the day of the big raid last month, his younger siblings woke him at 6:30 A.M., three hours after the soldiers entered the camp. The troops were scouring the alleys and seizing control of buildings. At first, the camp’s inhabitants thought the soldiers had come to demolish the home of Mohammed al-Shobaki, who stabbed an IDF soldier last November and was killed afterward. However, it soon became apparent that the troops had other intentions, though it was not clear what they were.

Watching the show

The whole camp was up on rooftops, watching the show, and Amassi was no exception. His house has two roofs: one, with a low rail, where people sit on hot summer nights; and above it an unfenced roof, for the water tank and satellite dish. Amassi climbed onto the upper roof to get a better view. It’s dangerous there: Without the fence, there’s no place to take cover. Teams from Ma’an and the television channel Palestine Today were positioned on the roof of the adjacent building, which offers better protection from the soldiers. Clashes were taking place between soldiers and stone throwers on the camp’s main street, but quiet prevailed here, on the high hill where this neighborhood stands.

The troops seized quite a few houses — about 30, according to Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem — and carried out searches in about 200 homes, smashing holes in some walls for snipers. At about 9 A.M., Amassi was talking to the reporters on the next-door roof. Suddenly he heard a soldier who was deployed on the balcony of the building below his call to him in Arabic: “Where do you want to get it?” Amassi was petrified. He knew what this meant: In which part of your body do you want to be shot?

According to Amassi, there was nothing to account for the soldier’s chilling question. The street was quiet, and Mohammed had done nothing that could be construed as a threat to the troops, who were 80 meters away as the crow flies. His father, Ibrahim, believes the soldiers shot his son in order to demonstrate their power to the camera crews on the roof next door.

“What did the soldier say to you?” Amassi’s friend, Ismail Najar, asked from the neighboring roof. But before Amassi could answer, he saw the soldier take aim and start shooting at him. Three bullets struck him in rapid succession. The first slammed into his left leg next to the knee, the second hit him between his hip and his left thigh, the third smashed into his right leg. When he raised his hands and called out to the soldier, “Enough, enough,” the sniper fired one more round, perhaps as an encore. The final bullet hit him in the palm of his hand. They were 0.22-inch Ruger, or Toto, bullets and didn’t kill him

Amassi then tried to find shelter on an exposed roof that has no shelter. He could have fallen off. In the edited Ma’an video, he’s seen crawling desperately. A flimsy, makeshift iron ladder — which I was afraid to climb — is the only way to gain access the upper roof. Somehow, the paramedics got him down. They carried him by foot for about 150 meters up the narrow alley to their ambulance, which took a soldier-bypass route to get him to Al-Ahli Hospital in nearby Hebron. Amassi was semiconscious. Damage had been done to blood vessels. To avoid having to amputate his leg, he was moved to Hebron’s other hospital, Alia. But they, too, did not have the necessary specialist. That evening, he was transferred to the Ramallah Government Hospital, where he underwent surgery.

In reply to a query from Haaretz, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated this week: “On August 16, a military operation was conducted in Al-Fawwar refugee camp, with the aim of thwarting and striking at the terrorist infrastructures that exist throughout the camp. The operation included extensive searches to seize combat means and also the arrest of five wanted individuals. During the operation, army forces came under live fire and violent disturbances developed, which included the throwing of stones and cinder blocks, and dozens of explosive devices and Molotov cocktails, to which the forces responded with crowd dispersal means and shooting. The video mentioned is edited tendentiously and does not reflect the violent situation that developed in the refugee camp.”

Amassi spent 10 days in the Ramallah hospital. One bullet remains lodged deep inside, somewhere between his waist and hip and left thigh, and the physicians aren’t sure they will be able to remove it. If not, he will probably have to undergo additional surgery in Jordan. Next to his bed is a plastic jar containing the two bullet fragments that were successfully extracted from his body. He’s taking five different types of painkillers to try to relieve the suffering.

We leave him and go up to the roof. There are tangled iron rods where he fell. A few hours after he was shot, troops killed Mohammed Abu Hashhash, 19, who was shot the instant he stepped out of his house, a few hundred meters away, on another street. The soldiers opened fire through a breach they made in the wall of a neighboring house. That breach, together with a painting of the dead teenager on the wall, constitute a monument to a young man whose killing was probably as unnecessary as the shooting of the young baker in Al-Fawwar.

Arab Organization for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) accused PA and Israeli security forces of carrying out arbitrary arrests, acts of torture, and attacks on and confiscation of private property.

These being carried out by PA security forces clearly form part of a systematic policy designed to crush any form of opposition to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the organization said in a new report issued Thursday.

AOHR UK held President Mahmoud Abbas and the heads of security forces, together, personally responsible, for these violations and wishes to draw their attention, to the Palestinian Authority’s legal commitments, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

AOHR UK also urged the UN Secretary-General and the EU, to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to put an end to arbitrary arrests, abolish torture and to release all political detainees.

AOHR UK called on the international community, to exert serious effort in bringing to a halt the Israeli killing machine, which has been murdering Palestinians indiscriminately.

On the other hand, the Organization called for the release of all political detainees, especially women, children, administrative detainees, and the unwell, especially those suffering from very serious conditions.

According to the report, PA forces killed during August three Palestinian citizens with no legal basis and arrested and summoned 112 others, including four journalists. During the same reported period, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians and arrested 516 others including women and children.

The report pointed out that nearly 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli occupation prisons, including 56 women and 340 children (held at Megiddo and Ofer prisons).